welcome to the organic green doctor blog

i am a family physician who was diagnosed with
early mild cognitive impairment(mci) amnestic type on december 21, 2010
this is a precursor to alzheimers disease
because of this diagnosis i have opted to stop practicing medicine
this blog will be about my journey with this disease
please feel free to follow me along this path
i will continue blogging on organic gardening, green living,
solar power, rainwater collection, and healthy living
i will blog on these plus other things noted to be interesting

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

getting old

GETTING OLD
these are the words that i dont want to utter
im getting old

over the last week i have thought about it a lot
its been a week since i started this cataract journey
its made me think a lot about
am i getting old

now
ive been fighting getting old since i retired 8 years old
so far
i think ive been winning
until
this last week

after the second surgery last week to remove the dislocated lens
i started thinking
im getting old

my day starts with a 2-3 hour bout of computer time
its the only time i get on the computer the rest of the day
i know after i get my 3 cups of coffee and take my aricept (donnepezil) that i will have a burst of energy that will usually last until 100pm
then i start fading some
so
i take a nap
usually about an hour or so
i also take that time to watch my favorite news show and to watch my favorite sports show
then
after the nap i get up and do some busy work inside or outside until our evening meal
having lost some of that busy energetic self

now i will have a good 8-12 hrs of good energy
enough to do what i like to do
it rarely ever involves sitting still except for my computer time and my nap time
that is
until this last week
half my day is spent putting those 5 eye drops in my eye four times a day with five minutes between the drops
you can do the math to see how much time gets eaten up by those drops
cutting into my getting things done time

then
i developed double vision if i tried to not use a lens on my surgerized eye side since its starting to approach normal
so i popped my old lens for someone with real bad vision back in to stop my double vision
so right now my vision is right where i was when i started before the surgery

now
the plan is to pop a contact in the non surgerized eye tomorrow so i can then use the improving surgerized eye without glasses on
which will eliminate the double vision
yes i tripped over a lot of cracks in the sidewalk when we went walking holding onto my wife she as i went along
this is a place i dont want to be in
also going up and down the stairs was hard since i couldnt tell which stair was real and which was an illusion
i took my time
held onto the rail
held onto my wife she
like some little old elderly man with my bernie glasses on

you can forget driving
but
once i put my old glasses on all that went away
i just couldnt see as well out of the surgerized eye looking through the old lens
for now that will have to do

i was even able to drive with my old glasses

hopefully tomorrow will bring a better day on the eye front
i realized that i might not be wearing glasses again after 56 years of wearing glasses
i realized that i have never owned a pair of sunglasses
only clipons or bernie over the glasses sunglasses or those tinted lens that made it hard to see since my prescription was so strong

i dont know i might have to just pop out both lenses or have fake lenses put in my glasses so i can wear them
wearing glasses seems to be embedded in my dna since ive worn them for so long

yep
a new world tomorrow
for the better if i can get the surgerized eye to 20/20

now
someone asked me yesterday at the ucla research center
are you going to get the other one done
i dont think so i said
ill decide after all this trauma is over with
probably not i thought later

ill just may have to accept being a one eyed willie forever

the organicgreen doctor

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